Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 112, Issue 50, Pages 15516-15521Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1504454112
Keywords
social neuroscience; emotions; social gaze; eye blink; prosocial
Categories
Funding
- Laboratory of Excellence framework of University de Lyon within the program Investissement d'Avenir [ANR-11-LABEX-0042]
- Rhone-Alpes Region
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche [BLAN-SVSE4-023-01, BS4-0010-01]
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Primates live in highly social environments, where prosocial behaviors promote social bonds and cohesion and contribute to group members' fitness. Despite a growing interest in the biological basis of nonhuman primates' social interactions, their underlying motivations remain a matter of debate. We report that macaque monkeys take into account the welfare of their peers when making behavioral choices bringing about pleasant or unpleasant outcomes to a monkey partner. Two macaques took turns in making decisions that could impact their own welfare or their partner's. Most monkeys were inclined to refrain from delivering a mildly aversive airpuff and to grant juice rewards to their partner. Choice consistency between these two types of outcome suggests that monkeys display coherent motivations in different social interactions. Furthermore, spontaneous affilitative group interactions in the home environment were mostly consistent with the measured social decisions, thus emphasizing the impact of preexisting social bonds on decision-making. Interestingly, unique behavioral markers predicted these decisions: benevolence was associated with enhanced mutual gaze and empathic eye blinking, whereas indifference or malevolence was associated with lower or suppressed such responses. Together our results suggest that prosocial decision-making is sustained by an intrinsic motivation for social affiliation and controlled through positive and negative vicarious reinforcements.
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